Polymer-assisted chemical solution deposition of high-quality La 2 Zr 2 O 7 buffer layer applied to low-cost YBCO-coated conductors

Through a simple and low-cost way to gain the precursor solution, high-quality La 2 Zr 2 O 7 (LZO) buffer layers approximately 300 nm thick only by one single coating were successfully deposited on the textured Ni-5at%W alloy substrates using an independently developed new method of polymer-assisted chemical solution deposition (PA-CSD) with and without Y 2 O 3 seed layer. Highly epitaxial YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7− x (YBCO) thin film with thickness of 500 nm is managed to be deposited on LZO/Y 2 O 3 /NiW. A study was made on the buffers and YBCO films with XRD, AFM, FIB-SEM, ESEM, and through superconducting critical temperature ( T c ) analyses, and it was found that the Y 2 O 3 seed layer had a good effect in improving the c-axis texture for the performance of LZO thin films. More importantly, the value of the self-field critical current density ( J c ) of YBCO film on LZO/Y 2 O 3 /NiW architecture was 1.6 MA/cm 2 at 77 K. Our results indicated that the low-cost and effective way to develop high-performance YBCO-coated conductors on the basis of high-quality LZO buffer layer were suitable candidates.